open source marketer and community manager

Funambol asks EU to approve the Oracle+Sun deal

I was very concerned when DG Competition announced that they needed to take more time to investigate the merger of Oracle and Sun because of MySQL. The deal for me seemed not only natural for business reasons, but also naturally neutral towards consumers. MySQL is safe also in Oracle’s hands because the project, with so many big companies knowing its internals, is basically too big to fail now. Even if Oracle should decide not to finance its development (which makes absolutely no business sense for them) there should be enough providers out there capable of offering support to users and further its development (software patents threat excluded).

The database market is highly dynamic, and the software on which these enterprises are built can neither be owned nor their development paths easily controlled or curtailed.

And the damage for this wait is huge, not just for the companies, but for the employee. With Sun loosing $100Million per month, there is not much time to waste. Says Fabrizio:

The alternative to a full merger is likely to be the exit of SUN Microsystems from the database market. […] Their likely exit from the market will harm the open source software market and further entrench the position of proprietary software providers.

I hope that Commissioner Kroes listens and that Funambol’s letter can help clear her doubts.